The Day After in the Old Dominion

Virginia’s contribution to the blue wave this fall saw the usual round of Republican hand wringing and finger pointing. President Donald Trump blamed the defeats in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City on the absence of his name on the ballot, as well as voter frustration with the government shutdown. Concerning the governor’s race in Virginia, several pundits blame Winsome Earle-Sears defeat on her recent flip-flop from a “Never Trumper” to a “Forever Trumper,” as well as her lack of substance on policy issues. Much of this is speculative at best. It is unlikely that an endorsement from President Trump would have aided Seares all that much. While President Trump did win 4% more of the vote than Earle-Seares, Kamala Harris defeated him in Virginia by nearly 6% of the vote. Trump certainly enjoys broad and deep support in the Shenandoah Valley and in Southwest Virginia, but he is a lightning rod for opposition in the deep blue counties of Northern Virginia and viewed with some misgivings in some of the more conservative counties outside of these regions. Whatever turnout gains the Trump name may have achieved in red Virginia would be immediately avalanched by the more densely populated blue regions of the state. Moreover, the Republican party in Virginia resembles that of her sister state in Maryland: unimaginative, timid, lackluster, and inept. Occasionally an able moderate under the right conditions is elected to statewide office, such as Larry Hogan in Maryland and Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. Hogan was antagonistic towards Trump and Youngkin ambivalent in his posture toward Trump. In Virginia, however, the blue wave that captured the statewide offices resulted from trends that emerged in the 1960s and continue to direct the political fortunes of the Chesapeake states and soon the rest of the Southeast.

The backgrounds of the victorious Democrats, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, Attorney General-elect Jay Jones, and Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala F. Hamshi tell the tale of the coalition that dominates Virginia’s political life. Spanberger’s formative years were spent in the Northeast, her family settled in Virginia when she turned thirteen. She worked as a postal inspector and later a case officer for the CIA. Max Blumenthal, an investigative reporter and editor in chief of the Grayzone, claims Spanberger’s career at the CIA is an opaque mystery, perhaps she is representative of the entity some call the deep state or shadow government. Her political career began at a fortuitous time when the third district of Virginia became dominated by the rapidly suburbanizing counties of Henrico and Chesterfield. It would not be unlikely that she runs for President of the United States, her positions are reminiscent of the old Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, though she is smarter and more politically astute than Hillary Clinton. Jay Jones, unlike Spanberger and Hamshi, is a native Virginian from a prominent family of professionals with a long involvement in education, government, and in earlier generations the Civil Rights movement. He is also relatively young at thirty-six, which may explain his more radical stance and openness to threatening his political opponents with violence. Hamshi is an immigrant who holds a Ph. D. in English from Emory University. O the surface, the ethnicities of Jones and Hamshi (Jones is African American while Hamshi is Indian) may seem to check the correct intersectionality boxes, but a closer look reveals a far more interesting trend. The groups who matter in Virginia’s Democratic Party coalition are the government workers and contractors who are not native Virginians and who reside primarily in Northern Virginia, the Lower Peninsula and Richmond, the academic elite of the university and college town. and African Americans of the professional class who make up an important part of the Party’s leadership. The newly elected statewide office holders are representative of this ruling coalition which is comparatively narrow in its interests but now holds a dominant demographic advantage in the Old Dominion. Each of the newly elected statewide office holders perfectly represents elements of this powerful coalition. The victory of this coalition has less to do with the alleged weakness of Republican candidates or how Trump is perceived in Virginia than with a long trend of demographic, economic, and political changes that have shaped contemporary Virginia.

One of the great truths of politics rarely voiced in our democratic age is that interests are directly represented in government, not people. In olden days, the Country Tories and the Old Whigs understood this well, as did the Commonwealth’s most singular political figure, John Randolph of Roanoke. Over time, the expansion of the franchise became identified with greater representation of the “people,” which of course is a mathematical impossibility. No one of sound mind can argue that a member of the House of Representatives truly represents the 760, 000 or so residents of their district. The same principle holds true for the 86,000 people populating a Virginia House district of the 216,000 people populating the Commonwealth’s Senate districts. What is represented in these districts are the dominant interests. Good governance, particularly at the state level, was associated with balancing interests within the state. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 destroyed this by insisting on the principle of one man one vote, thus districts were drawn up on the basis of equalized population and often included places and people whose interests were antagonistic, most especially when gerrymandering was present. While the Voting Rights Act did increase the representation of African American interests, the true winners were the densely populate urban and suburban areas. Thus, in Virginia, the interests of government workers and contractors living in heavily populated Northern Virginia, the Lower Peninsula, and the Richmond area dominate the political life of the Commonwealth, with the college towns as a junior partnership in the coalition. Many of these people who live in these areas are not native to Virginia and are antagonistic to the Commonwealth’s history and political traditions. One will look in vain for political leaders in the Commonwealth’s Democrat party who take even a little inspiration from George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, let alone John Marshall or the Old Republicans.

As for the Republican party, they have a considerable responsibility to shoulder for the bluing of the Commonwealth. In truth, the Republican party, aside from a few individual exceptions, were never a party of limited government, most Republicans never saw a defense contract they did not like. The cancerous growth of Foggy Bottom and its subject districts in Maryland and Virginia are as much their doing as the Democrats. The demographic explosion of Northern Virginia and the Lower Peninsula enabled the weaponization of the Voting Rights Act in favor of the government and government enriched classes. Former President Bill Clinton and the Blue Dog Democrats were the first to see the potential and they made it a priority in the 1990s to court the monied and connected classes of Northern Virginia to support the Democrat Party, which was a giant step in the transformation of the Party into the party of the elite. Rural Virginia had nowhere to go but to the Republicans. The rural heartland of Virginia: the Valley, the Southwest, the Southside, the Lower Piedmont, and parts of the Northern Neck, are now left on the margins, and their interests are ignored. Worse for the Commonwealth is that the imbalance of interests threatens the safety and stability of the Commonwealth.

An example of the threat to the Commonwealth’s stability occurred in 2019. Then Governor Ralph Northam proposed a series of gun control measures, the most controversial of which was an “assault” rifle ban. From 2019 to 2020 over 125 towns and counties declared themselves second amendment sanctuaries. In some cases, county commissioners and sheriffs led the opposition to Northam, but in many cases local governments were faced with a massive outpouring of opposition to Northam’s proposals that overcame their reluctance to oppose Richmond. The “assault” rifle ban failed in the Senate, but with Democrat gains in recent years in the Senate it is doubtful if such legislation could be defeated again. Moreover, for all the empty rhetoric about representing “all Virginians,” Spanberger, Hashmi, and Jones have exhibited little if any understanding let alone sympathy for the interests and values of rural Virginia. Worse still, the campaign rhetoric of Spanberger and Jones does not inspire confidence that they will manage a volatile situation with prudence. Spanberger urged her supporters to, “Let your rage fuel you.” Jones, meanwhile, texted the following with respect Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert (R) in 2022, “Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” and described Gilberts and his wife as “described Gilbert and his wife as “breeding little fascists.” These are not the statements of people who exercise good control over their emotional lives. How will they act in a tense situation where the stakes are high?

The Commonwealth has come to a dangerous crossroads. The interests that Spanberger, Hashmi, and Jones will continue to strengthen as development makes its way down route 95. Spotsylvania and Stafford counties will soon go blue, as may well Clarke County in the west. West Virginia State Senator Chris Rose has submitted a resolution inviting the Valley and the Southwest of Virginia along with three Western Maryland counties to secede and join West Virginia. He makes a compelling case based upon geography, culture, and yes interests. His resolution should be given careful consideration. As for those states further South, the future is now. North Carolina is increasingly governed by an outside cabal centered in the Triangle and in Charlotte. South Carolina has seen an increase of nearly a third of its population, mostly from non-Southern states settling in the Charleston and Columbia areas and threatening the political balance of the state. Creative and thoughtful proposals such as Senator Rose’s will be needed there as well.

The revisionist historians of the War Between the States writing in the 1940s an 1950s, blamed the war and its attendant catastrophes on a “blundering generation” of politicians. These included: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William Seward, Alexander Stephens, Stephen Douglas, Robert Toombs, and many others whose political acumen dwarfs that of the denizens of Foggy Bottom. It is up to the people of the states to find away to avoid the mistakes of the men of the 1850s.

The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.

John Devanny

John Devanny holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of South Carolina. Dr. Devanny resides in Front Royal, Virginia, where he writes, tends garden, and occasionally escapes to bird hunt or fly fish..

View all posts